1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data encryption, and more particularly to key escrow data encryption.
2. Related Art
Introduction
An United States Presidential announcement on Apr. 16, 1993, referred to as the "Clipper initiative," called for the development of a hardware implementation of a classified encryption algorithm called "Skipjack". The Presidential announcement characterized the Skipjack algorithm as being "significantly stronger than those currently available to the public." The hardware implementation of Skipjack would also include a capability called "key escrow" which allows the government to recover the keys used for data encryption. The integrated circuit chip which implements the Skipjack algorithm is called the "Clipper chip" and/or the "Capstone chip".
The Clipper initiative (particularly the key escrow feature) attempts to preserve the ability of law enforcement and national security to intercept and exploit the contents of communications while providing law-abiding citizens with an encryption system much stronger than any now available to them. The announcement of the Clipper initiative and the subsequent discussions made it clear that, while Skipjack is a stronger encryption algorithm than the current unclassified Data Encryption Standard (DES), law enforcement entities considered that the proliferation of DES voice security devices would be a significant impediment to their need to preserve the ability to accomplish court-ordered wiretaps.
A great deal of resistance to the Clipper initiative was evident in the public reaction to the April 16 announcement. Objections were expressed in various forms, but the following key points stand out:
Many people objected to the potential for loss of privacy that would result from the deployment of key escrow cryptography and the associated sharing of heretofore private cryptographic keys with government escrow agents. PA1 Many people raised objections to the Administration's attempt to use the buying power of the government to impose as de facto standards a family of encryption products that could be defeated at will by government agencies. PA1 Some people objected to the introduction of a classified algorithm as the standard for the protection of unclassified information. DES is public and has had wide scrutiny in its fifteen year life. There were suggestions that Skipjack might have a defect or trap door (other than the key escrow process). These objections were not quieted by the favorable review of Skipjack by a panel of outside cryptographers. PA1 Many people (especially suppliers of Information Technology products) objected to the requirement for a hardware implementation because of its cost and because of the limitations that the need to accommodate a government-designed chip imposes on overall system or product design. PA1 Law enforcement and national security agencies are concerned that growing use of encrypted communications will impair their ability to use court-ordered wiretapping to solve crimes and prevent acts of terrorism. Widespread use of key escrow cryptography would preserve this ability for these agencies, while providing the public with the benefits of good quality cryptography. In the case of law enforcement and national security, government escrow agents provide access to communications when authorized by a court order. PA1 Some corporations have expressed a concern that careless or malicious mismanagement of keys by employees might deny the corporation access to its valuable information. Key escrow cryptography at the corporate level has been advocated as a mechanism by which such corporations might regain access to their information. In this sort of application, one might have senior management or personnel offices serve as escrow agents who would permit an employee's supervisor to gain access to his or her files or communications. PA1 Individuals who use encryption for their own information may forget or lose the passwords that protect their encryption keys, die, or become incapacitated. Key escrow cryptography has been proposed as a safety mechanism for such individuals. In this case, an individual might select friends or attorneys as escrow agents who would allow the individual (or perhaps the executor of his or her estate) access to protected information. PA1 In some cases, government agencies have the authority to monitor the business communications of their employees. Such authority applies, for example, in military and national security installations where it is used to detect the misuse of classified or sensitive information. Key escrow cryptography offers such agencies the opportunity to exercise their authority to monitor even for encrypted communications. In this application, communications security officers might serve as escrow agents who would grant access to line managers or commanders. PA1 Separate hardware provides a degree of protection for the encryption process difficult to obtain in software systems. An errant or malicious computer program can not corrupt the encryption algorithm or key management embedded in a hardware encryption device such as the Clipper or Capstone chip. PA1 Separate hardware provides a degree of protection for the key escrow process difficult to obtain in software systems. While software can manipulate the externally visible parameters of the escrow process, hardware at least provides some assurance that the escrow operations are performed or verified. PA1 If a classified encryption algorithm such as Skipjack is used, separate hardware that implements special protective measures may be essential to protect the design of the algorithm from disclosure. PA1 Secret cryptographic keys can be provided with a high degree of protection on a hardware device since unencrypted keys need never appear outside the device. In contrast, it is difficult or even impossible to protect secret keys embedded in software from users with physical control of the underlying computer hardware. PA1 Proliferation of an encryption capability is perceived to be easier to control with respect to accounting for controlled devices and restriction of exports with hardware devices than with embedded software.
In August 1993, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a cooperative program with industry to explore possible approaches to the implementation of key escrow in software (without the need for dedicated hardware components such as the Clipper or Capstone chips).
There are a number of issues that intertwine in any discussion of this topic. Such issues include hardware implementation, classified encryption algorithms, and how much trust one must put in the user of the encryption process. These issues are considered below. However, before addressing these issues, it will be useful to consider key escrow.
Key Escrow Cryptography
Key escrow adds to products that implement cryptography features that allow authorized parties to retrieve the keys for encrypted communications and then decrypt the communications using such keys. In the Clipper initiative, keys for each encryption device are mathematically divided into two halves (each equal in length to the original key) and the halves are held by two separate escrow agents. Both escrow agents must cooperate (to regenerate the original key) before the communications from a given device can be decrypted. For Clipper, the escrow agents are government agencies who require assurance that the law enforcement agency requesting the keys has a court order authorizing a wiretap for the communications in question.
A number of needs have been cited to justify key escrow cryptography. Some apply to the needs of law enforcement and national security, while others apply to the needs of individual users or organizations:
The Clipper initiative focuses on the first of the four applications for key escrow cited above. In addition, the Clipper initiative couples the introduction of key escrow with the introduction of Skipjack, a new classified encryption algorithm much stronger than the unclassified DES.
Opponents of the Clipper initiative have argued that a key escrow encryption system such as Clipper can be defeated by sophisticated users such as organized crime, who have the ability to write or buy their own encryption system (without key escrow) and either ignore the key escrow products altogether or encrypt first under their own system and then under the key escrow system. Other options are open to pairs of users who wish to cooperate to defeat key escrow, and some opponents of the Clipper initiative have suggested that the only way to deter such options is to forbid non-escrowed encryption by law and to enforce the law with a vigorous program of monitoring communications--an unappealing prospect to say the least.
Proponents of the Clipper initiative counter that they are well aware that pairs of cooperating users have many ways to avoid key escrow. The objective that these proponents cite is to make it difficult or impossible for a single "rogue" user to communicate securely with parties (or more precisely with escrowed encryption devices) that believe they are engaged in a communication where both communicants are faithfully following the escrow rules.
The "single rogue user" scenario constitutes a test for a key escrow system. A successful key escrow system (hardware or software) should prevent a single rogue user from exploiting the crypiography in the escrowed product, and from defeating or bypassing the product's key escrow features, while still enabling secure communication with other users (products) that believe that they and the rogue user are implementing the escrow features correctly.
The "Clipper" chip addresses the "single rogue user" by embedding the key for each individual communication session in a Law Enforcement Access Field (LEAF) that is encrypted under a secret key (the Family Key) that is common to all "Clipper" chips. The embedded information includes a checksum that depends on the session key. The receiving "Clipper" chip also holds the Family Key; thus, it can decrypt the LEAF and verify that the checksum is the correct one for the current session key (which both chips must share in private for communication to be successful and secure). All "Clipper" chips share the embedded Family Key and rely on the tamperproof hardware of the chip to protect the Family key from disclosure.
Hardware Implementation of Key Escrow Cryptography
There are several factors that support the decision to require the use of separate hardware in the design of the key escrow products proposed as part of the Clipper initiative (Clipper and Capstone chips). Some of these factors, discussed below, are related to the introduction of key escrow cryptography, some to the use of a classified encryption algorithm, and some to the choice of a conservative standard for the design of encryption products.
The list above makes it clear that some of the need for hardware in the Clipper initiative derives from a need to protect the classified Skipjack algorithm, some from conservative design of the encryption system, and some from a need to protect the escrow process.
Use of a Classified Data Encryption Algorithm
The Skipjack encryption algorithm that was introduced with the Clipper initiative is claimed to be much stronger than existing publicly available algorithms such as DES. Having a strong algorithm is a valuable selling point for any new encryption initiative. But, as the discussion above pointed out, protecting a classified algorithm from disclosure requires, at least at the current state of technology, a hardware implementation that embodies special measures to resist reverse engineering.
Classified encryption algorithms are often considered much stronger than those in the public domain since the algorithms used to protect government classified information are classified. But because they are not available for public review, suggestions that classified algorithms be used to protect unclassified information are suspect due to the possible existence of unknown deliberate trapdoors or unintentional flaws. While DES was initially viewed with suspicion by some, it was subject to intense public scrutiny and its principal strength now is that even after fifteen years, no serious flaw has been found.
Key escrow techniques as such do not require classified algorithms and can be used with publicly available algorithms such as DES and IDEA or with proprietary but unclassified algorithms such as RSADSI's RC2 and RC4. If a publicly available or proprietary unclassified algorithm were used in a product that embodied key escrow cryptography, it would not be necessary to have a hardware implementation for the purpose of protecting the encryption algorithm from disclosure (although there are other reasons for implementing key escrow cryptography in hardware, as the above list indicates).
This interdependence between hardware implementation and classified algorithm has caused considerable confusion in examining the feasibility of software key escrow approaches. If one requires a classified algorithm, one must use hardware to protect the algorithm whether one implements key escrow or not. If one chooses an unclassified public or proprietary algorithm, one is free to implement in hardware or software. The decision to implement in hardware and software is driven by other factors, such as those identified in the above list.
Benefits and Limitations of Software Encryption
Historically, encryption systems that have been used to protect sensitive information have been implemented as separate hardware devices, usually outboard "boxes" between a computer or communications system and a communications circuit. Such devices are designed with a high level of checking for operational integrity in the face of failures or malicious attack, and with especially careful measures for the protection of cryptographic functions and keys.
Software encryption systems have historically been viewed with suspicion because of their limited ability to protect their algorithms and keys. The paragraphs above discussed the issues associated with protecting classified (or secret) encryption algorithms from disclosure. Over and above these issues is the fact that an encryption algorithm implemented in software is subject to a variety of attacks. The computer's operating system or a user can modify the code that implements the encryption algorithm to render it ineffective, steal secret cryptographic keys from memory, or, worst of all, cause the product to leak its secret cryptographic keys each time it sends or receives an encrypted message.
The principal disadvantage of using encryption hardware, and therefore the primary advantage of integrated software implementations, is cost. When encryption is implemented in hardware, whether a chip, a board or peripheral (such as a PCMCIA card) or a box, end users have to pay the price. Vendors must purchase chips and design them into devices whose costs go up because of the additional "real estate" required for the chip. End users must purchase more expensive devices with integrated encryption hardware, or must buy PCMCIA cards or similar devices and then pay the price for adding a device interface to their computing systems or dedicating an existing interface to encryption rather than another function such as that performed by a modem or disk.
A second major advantage of software implementations is simplicity of operation. Software solutions can be readily integrated into a wide variety of applications. Generally, the mass market software industry, which attempts to sell products in quantities of hundreds of thousands or millions, seeks to implement everything it can in software so as to reduce dependencies on hardware variations and configurations and to provide users with a maximum of useful product for minimum cost.